Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/424

 4io THE HISTORY OF A HEBREW LEXICON. F the writers concerned in the curious entanglement with which I propose to deal, the first in both logical and chrono- logical order is Valentine Schindler, sometime Professor of Oriental Lan- guages in the Universities of Wittenberg and Helmstadt. Of him I know nothing beyond what can be learnt from the title-page and prefaces to his ' Lexicon pentaglotton,' published posthumously at Hanover in 1612. As Schindler's part in the ensuing drama was a purely passive one, we need not trouble ourselves further about him, except to note that his lexicon is to be found in most of the larger libraries, and that it was evidently recog- nised in its day as a standard authority in England as well as on the continent. Next comes William Alabaster, Latin poet and divine, born 1567, educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, and known to fame as the author of the Latin tragedy * Roxana,' of which Dr. Johnson remarked that ' if we pro- duced anything [in Latin verse] worthy of notice before the elegies of Milton it was perhaps Ala- baster's " Roxana." As we shall see, Alabaster occupied his later years in the pursuit of recondite studies in prophetic divinity. He died in 1640.